'Working on a show like DIY SOS is a good judge of who to do business with'

Interior designer Aoife Rhattigan talks about the 'halo effect' and what it's like to create homes with the crew led by Baz Ashmawy

Aoife Rhattigan, right, with the DIY SOS team working on the Costello family's home in Santry, Dublin.

What's it like to be an interior design powerhouse on a home makeover show?

More specifically, what’s it like to effect meaningful holistic changes to someone’s entire way of living?

“It’s just so life-affirming, particularly in the world we’re in now,” says Aoife Rhattigan.

This is not all whimsical, Pollyanna stuff.

This is reality.

Aoife Rhattigan of Restless Design.

Aoife Rhattigan shares interior design duties with fellow Dublin-based designer Kerry Hiddleston on DIY SOS: The Big Build Ireland.

Both work on different episodes throughout the series.

Aoife, who set up her own business, Restless Design, 12 years ago, says joining a show like this is an eye-opener in other ways.

“Nobody’s faking it,” Aoife tells me. “Outside of this, most of the work I do [in Restless Design] is commercial — retail, office refurbs. 

"But since DIY SOS, I’ve done a lot of work with the suppliers and tradespeople I’ve worked with on the show, because it’s a good judge of who to do business with.

“If you’re onsite [with a project on the series], you’re a good person to do work with. It’s the halo effect.”

The interior designer describes herself as “an emotional wreck” at the end of filming each episode.

Every time we film, I tell myself, ‘This time I am not going to be crying on camera’. But they all know I am definitely going to be blubbing at the end. You’d want to have a heart of stone not to.”

Aoife worked on the TV show Design Doctors a couple of years ago. “So I was on RTÉ’s radar,” she says.

She got a call from Motive, producer of DIY SOS: The Big Build Ireland. “I had to jump online and look at some DIY SOS (UK) programmes,” she says frankly.

“And I thought, ‘You know what, I think Irish people are really suited to a show like this’, because our population is so much smaller, we’re an extensive community.

“You know the Irish word meitheal, which signifies that coming together — I feel there’s that community sense of meitheal on every episode.

“Culturally, we’re really suited to taking care of each other and opening our heart.”

Baz Ashmawy with the Costello family in Dublin.

Show host Baz Ashmawy shares this belief, Aoife adds.

“Baz even spoke about it on one of the episodes last year — he was talking about how his mam always says you have to find what you’re good at and give it away. And that’s it. That kind of sums it up for me. Interiors it what I’m good at. And it’s not always easy [to give it away] when design and interiors are your focus. They can be seen as a luxury.

“But I have a belief that good design is for everybody. It’s not a luxury.”

And that’s the code that Aoife operates by in life and in her work with Restless Design. “DIY SOS is very much that spirit also. It’s a lot of work. Most of it is off camera, in advance, before we go to site, so everybody on site can hit the ground running,” adds Aoife.

“You have to be passionate about it. Sometimes I wonder, ‘Are we all going mad here?’ And then it all comes together.”

Aoife, from Mullingar, Co Westmeath, is based in Dublin where she began Restless Design in 2010. “I had worked for a big architectural firm and then freelanced a little bit, ducking and weaving, it was a tough couple of years, and Restless emerged from that.

“Restless came about in recessionary times, so it’s good test of a company if you can survive that,” she says. “It’s my baby and I dragged my husband Cathal into it. His background is technology and business.”

Both Aoife and Cathal focus on pushing creative boundaries including virtual reality when it comes to design.

“We love anything kind of groundbreaking – restless by name and restless by nature; there’s never a dull moment,” she says.

A mother of two, she says she was “one of those make-and-do kids”. “I have one of those myself now so I realise how much I tortured my mum; I had a project going on in every room — and my elder daughter Molly is exactly the same,” she says. “Molly is seven and Juno is four; they are two little sweethearts.”

AND seeing the smiles on children’s faces is the highlights for her of working on DIY SOS for Aoife.

The Costello family on 'DIY SOS'.

The controversial “rainbow stairs” in the interiors of the home in Santry, north Dublin, she worked on for episode two in this series was an example of that. It delighted the children, in particular. “I didn’t do it for the sake of it; we actually respond to whatever brief we get,” she says.

“I wanted it to be joyful and fun and this was a really young, family home. And the kids say it’s their favourite thing in the house. That’s exactly what I was thinking about.”

Young mum Laura Costello had been left partially paralysed following a rare birth event which occurred during the delivery of her fourth baby in June 2020.

Laura has defied the odds so far, following what was a traumatic and almost catastrophic time.

The family home needed significant adaptation to facilitate wheelchair use and various complex occupational needs. Due to the efforts of the build team, Laura finally got to come home to live once again with her husband David, stepson Dylan and their four youngest children, Thomas, Matthew, Sophie and for the first time, with baby Daniel.

“You’re hitting a moving target because the house isn’t even built and I kind of torture all these amazing voluteers to get it right,” says Aoife.

“And Laura and David got it, we got each other. I knew that when they came out at the end to thank the crowd. It was like we’d got into each other’s heads — they got all the things I’d been thinking about for months in advance.

“We can’t help everyone but if we’re changing one person’s life that’s the big reward.”

• The fourth episode of DIY SOS: The Big Build Ireland is on RTÉ One on Sunday at 6.30pm